There are different outlets that you can take when making a website. The cost of a website is also a ratio of your time, knowledge and budget. The greater your time and skills - the cheaper you can build your website. On the other hand, you may need to spend more money for a professional website if you do not know what you are doing.

The cheapest route to do is go to a hosting company such as Godaddy and use their basic hosting package plus domain to create a simple brochure website. This package can be had for roughly a $100/yr. They offer a basic site builder and domain.

The problem is that its not very intuitive at that rate and the results aren't necessarily professional if you do not know what you are doing.

On the other hand, a good professional freelance designer should charge roughly $1400 for an effective website. Then, you will have varying hosting fees for additional years.

You can get lower quality designers, part-timers and students for cheaper rates but again you are trading affordability for time-involved, less security and quality.

There is a third alternative with sites such Intuit Websites, Wix and MiracleSites that provide a more user-friendly approach. You get a fully ready to use website that is easy to manage right out of the gate. These systems are roughly 10-30/a month to use and vary in their features and customization. The cheaper ones are generally limited in their available features and number of pages whereas the higher end ones give you full customization and pretty much any feature you'd need.

Some of the third alternative provides custom website design but they generally all provide cheaper theme based websites that vary in their quality.

I hope this reply helps. It all comes back to the tradeoff of time and skills versus to price. If you don't have time because you need to focus on your work and personal obligations, you will need to spend more. On the other hand, you may get away with a cheaper website if you can devote a large amount of time to building it.

Generally, a web designer will take a full month to build you a professional website and they have the necessary skills. This is to give you an overview of how much dedication that would need to be involved to DIY it.

For our site, we use intuit as the host. We pay around $150 for the year. It was around $100, but I decided to add more pages and features. I created the website myself, it's not too hard. The biggest thing you have to remember is to get your message across and keep it professional. A website can sway potential customers in the right direction. I like intuit, but that's just me. You can check out my site for ideas if you want! stockmanlawnscape.org

1. Don't go off of just looks. Many people do this and then end up with a site that "looks good to them", but can be horrible in terms of SEO, mobile viewing, and even different browsers/OS's, and worse a pain in the rump to change later without doing a complete "remake"

2. When deciding how much to spend, this will be a 24/7 ad and intro to you business to perspective customers. Now this is me, and not everyone is this way, but when I look to hire someone for doing services for me, I take in consideration in how much they present themselves. Being a web developer, I can easily see where people take shortcut or "cheap it out" with a site, and that always make me wonder, "will they do that in the service they provide me?" Again, that is me, I know I'm weird LOL

3. There will be those who swear one way is better than another here and "if anyone tells you different don't listen". Fact is that that there is always alternatives, and great tools can be horribly used, and not so popular tools can do fabulous results if set up right.

Think of it in terms on the service you provide. If I buy a house, and want to do a new landscape design, sure I can do it myself, find all kinds of guides online, but it will take dedication and time to get a very good result (and during that, I may make mistakes and have to redo things).

Now if I compare it to paying someone to do it for me, who already knows what they are doing, and should be doing it right the first time, and while they are doing that, I can spend my hours doing other things. How much is that worth to me?

Granted there are other factors like maybe I want to learn to do it myself, which I'm leaving out of that ;-)

Also just like the comparison of me going and hiring someone, I wouldn't just go hire someone based on work of their I saw from the street. They can make it look pretty today, how will it look later in the year, next year? I'd want someone with good references and a track record of what they can provide.

Good luck on your search, it's not a simple decision for sure, as it should truly an investment for your business, not just a "oh I also have a site" thing.

My website is "Hansen's Lawn Care", I wish I could say I created it myself but this guy built it, "Ring Lawn Care". He's a member on here, has his own lawn care company, and he is self taught for building websites and great SEO work. He built my website and within a 2-3 months I was on the first page of google. He'll get you found, quick! I paid him $500 for 5 pages, and he'll maintain your site for hardly anything...Contact his website, you'll wish you had found him sooner.

My website is "Hansen's Lawn Care", I wish I could say I created it myself but this guy built it, "Ring Lawn Care". He's a member on here, has his own lawn care company, and he is self taught for building websites and great SEO work. He built my website and within a 2-3 months I was on the first page of google. He'll get you found, quick! I paid him $500 for 5 pages, and he'll maintain your site for hardly anything...Contact his website, you'll wish you had found him sooner.

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A couple of us who have deep web experience respectfully disagree with much of what you've said. This has been done in various reviews, although I think some of the comments and posts have been removed by the mods when you tout his work.

(side note: you still have a few empty H tags on your homepage. I would assume these are residual tags left in the theme club template he used as each of you that have sites based on the Elegant Estate template have the same empty tags.)

A couple of us who have deep web experience respectfully disagree with much of what you've said. This has been done in various reviews, although I think some of the comments and posts have been removed by the mods when you tout his work.

(side note: you still have a few empty H tags on your homepage. I would assume these are residual tags left in the theme club template he used as each of you that have sites based on the Elegant Estate template have the same empty tags.)

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Yea i agree, i'm not too fond of his "professional" website making skills. I surely would'nt have spent $500 bucks for that site.....

A couple of us who have deep web experience respectfully disagree with much of what you've said. This has been done in various reviews, although I think some of the comments and posts have been removed by the mods when you tout his work.

(side note: you still have a few empty H tags on your homepage. I would assume these are residual tags left in the theme club template he used as each of you that have sites based on the Elegant Estate template have the same empty tags.)

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Tonygreek...thanks for the info. I'll look into it. Thing is I'm still ranked really high on google, in my local service region, which is really all I'm concerned about. But thanks a lot.

I just took a quick look at your home page and didn't take a look at the source code but I thought the way the text was worded that your site was pretty well optimized. I think you will continue to get good results on Google.

From a graphics standpoint it looks fine. I won't call it the most eye catching site I ever saw but it looks clean and professional. It does a decent job of selling your services and making you look professional and that is what a web site should do. For what you paid I think you got your moneys worth.